María Dueñas - The Time in Between

I walked toward the living room in the half gloom. Three closed balcony doors protected by green wooden shutters kept the daylight out. I opened them one by one, and the Moroccan autumn poured into the room, filling out the shadows with sweet premonitions.

I savored the silence and solitude, waiting a few minutes before undertaking any activity. As those minutes passed I didn’t do anything, just remained standing there in the center of that emptiness, getting used to my new place in the world. After a short while, when I thought it was time to break out of that lethargy, I finally summoned a reasonable dose of decisiveness and got going. With Doña Manuela’s old workshop as my reference point, I went over the whole apartment and mentally parceled out the different areas. The living room would serve as the main reception area: that’s where ideas would be presented, patterns consulted, fabrics and styles chosen, and orders placed. The room closest to the living room, a sort of dining room with a bay window in the corner, would be the fitting room. A curtain halfway down the corridor would separate that outer area from the rest of the apartment. The next stretch of the passageway and its corresponding rooms would be converted into the working area: workshop, storeroom, ironing room, the depository of off-cuts and hopes, whatever would fit. The third part, at the back, the darkest and least elegant part, would be for me. That is where the real me would live, the woman in pain, forcibly expatriated, debt-ridden, burdened with lawsuits and insecurities. The woman who had nothing to her name but a half-empty suitcase and a mother alone in a distant city who was struggling to survive. Who knew that setting up this business had cost the price of a large heap of pistols. That would be my refuge, my private space. From there outward, if luck finally stopped turning her back on me, would be the public domain of the dressmaker lately arrived from Spain to set up the most magnificent fashion house that the Protectorate had ever seen.

I returned to the entrance and heard someone knocking on the door. I opened it at once, knowing who it was. Candelaria slipped in like a particularly solid earthworm.

“How do you find it, girl? Do you like it?” she asked anxiously. She’d tidied herself up for the occasion; she was wearing one of the outfits I’d made for her, a pair of shoes she’d inherited from me and that were two sizes too small for her, and a somewhat unwieldy hairdo that her dear friend Remedios had done for her in great haste. Beyond the clumsy makeup on her eyelids, her dark eyes had a contagious gleam. It was a special day for the Matutera, too, the start of something new and unexpected. With the business almost ready to begin, she had done everything she possibly could do for the first time in her stormy life. Perhaps the new phase would make up for the hunger in her childhood, the beatings she received from her husband, the continual threats she’d been hearing for years from the police. She’d spent three-quarters of her life cheating, constructing cunning wiles, hurtling onward, and arm wrestling with bad luck; maybe it was finally time for her to take a rest.

I didn’t reply immediately to her question about what I thought of the place; first I held her gaze a few moments, stopping to weigh up everything that this woman had meant to me ever since the commissioner had deposited me in her house like an unwanted package.

As I regarded her in silence, unexpectedly I saw the shadow of my mother pass in front of her face. Dolores had very little in common with the Matutera. My mother was all rigor and temperance; Candelaria was pure dynamite. Their modes of being, their ethical codes, and the way they faced up to what fate offered them were quite different, but for the first time I saw a certain similarity between the two of them. Each, in her way and in her own world, belonged to a stock of brave women who fight their way through life with the little that luck gives them. For myself and for them, for all of us, I, too, had to fight to make that business stay afloat.

“I like it very much,” I replied at last with a smile. “It’s perfect, Candelaria; I couldn’t have imagined a better place.”

She returned my smile and pinched me on the cheek, brimming with affection and a wisdom as old as time. We both sensed that from then on everything would be different. Yes, we’d still see each other, but only from time to time, and discreetly. We’d no longer be sharing a roof, no longer be together to witness the arguments fought across the tablecloth, no longer be clearing the table together after dinner or talking in whispers in the darkness of my wretched room. But we both knew that until the end of time we would be joined by something that no one else would ever hear us speak of.

In less than a week I was all set up. Spurred on by Candelaria, I went about organizing the space, asking her for certain pieces of furniture, equipment, and tools. She took it all on, bringing to it her ingenuity as well as the banknotes, ready to sacrifice her very eyelashes to this business whose fortunes remained uncertain.

“Ask me loud and clear, my angel, because I’ve never seen a fancy dressmaker’s workshop in my goddamn life, so I have no idea what equipment a business like this needs. If we didn’t have the war on our backs the two of us could just go to Tangiers and get some marvelous French furniture at Le Palais du Mobilier, and while we were there half a dozen pairs of panties in La Sultana, but since we’re stuck in Tetouan with broken wings and I don’t want people to associate you too much with me, what we’ll do is you’ll ask me for things and I’ll figure out a way to get hold of them through my contacts. So just set me going, child: tell me what I’ve got to go hunt for and where to start.”

“First, the living room. It has to represent the image of the establishment, to give a sense of elegance and good taste,” I said, recalling Doña Manuela’s workshop and all the residences I’d seen on my deliveries. Although the apartment on Sidi Mandri, built to the proportions of Tetouan, was much smaller in its look and scale than the fine houses of Madrid, my memory of old times could serve as an example of how to arrange the present.

“And what do we put in it?”

“A gorgeous sofa, two pairs of good armchairs, a large table in the center, and two or three smaller ones to serve as side tables. Damask curtains over the balcony doors and a big lamp. That’ll be enough for now. Not many things, but very stylish and of the best quality.”

“I don’t see how I’m going to be able to get hold of all that, girl—Tetouan hasn’t got shops with such extravagant stock. Let me think a bit; I have a friend who works with a transport company, I’ll see if maybe I can get him to make me a delivery… Anyway, don’t you worry about it, I’ll sort it out somehow, and if any of the things are second- or thirdhand but of good, really good quality, I don’t think that matters much, right? That way it’ll seem as though the house has more old-fashioned class. Go on.”

“Images of designs, foreign fashion magazines. Doña Manuela had them by the dozen; when they got old she’d give them to us and I’d take them home, and I never tired of looking at them.”

“That’ll be hard to get hold of, too; since the uprising you know the borders have been closed and we aren’t receiving very much from outside. But, well, I know someone with a safe-conduct to Tangiers, I’ll sound him out to see if he can bring me some as a favor; he’ll give me a hefty bill in exchange, but, well, God knows…”

“Let’s hope he gets lucky, and be sure that there’s a good pile of the best ones.” I recalled the names of some of the ones I used to buy myself in Tangiers toward the end, when Ramiro was beginning to drift away from me. I had taken refuge for entire nights in their beautiful drawings and photographs. “The American ones— Harper’s Bazaar , Vogue , and a couple from France,” I added. “As many as he can find.”